More Than 1200 RNA Viruses May Have Connections With Carbon Flux

Several of the 5,500 marine RNA virus species recently discovered by scientists may help push carbon absorbed from the atmosphere to long-term storage on the ocean floor, according to a study.

The findings also show that a tiny number of these newly discovered species have "borrowed" DNA from the animals they infected, which might aid researchers in determining their supposed hosts and functions in marine processes.

The study is leading to a greater knowledge of the outsized impact these small particles play in the ocean environment, in addition to charting a wealth of core ecological data.

Viral 'dark matter'

(Photo : JEROEN JUMELET/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Ahmed Zayed, a research associate in microbiology at The Ohio State University and co-first author of the paper, the findings are essential for model creation and anticipating what is occurring with carbon in the proper direction and amount, as per ScienceDaily.

When considering the immensity of the ocean, the topic of size is a crucial concern.

Professor of microbiology Matthew Sullivan of Ohio State University anticipates discovering viruses that, when created on a large scale, may act as programmable "knobs" on a biological pump that controls how carbon is deposited in the ocean.

They're looking for viruses that can adjust to a more digestible carbon, allowing the system to develop, create larger and larger cells, and eventually sink.

And if it sinks, researchers will be spared the harshest consequences of climate change for another few hundred or thousand years.

These RNA viruses were discovered in plankton samples gathered by the Tara Oceans Consortium, a global study of the impact of climate change on the ocean conducted on board the schooner Tara.

The international effort aims to learn more about the mysterious organisms that live in the ocean and do the majority of the work of absorbing half of the human-generated carbon in the atmosphere and producing half of the oxygen we breathe in order to predict how the ocean will respond to climate change.

Also Read: Blueprint for Life: Scientists Detect All Bases of DNA and RNA in Meteorites

Metaproteomics sheds light on structural proteins

To identify possible hosts, the researchers employed a combination of methods, first inferring the host from the viruses' categorization in the context of marine plankton, and then generating predictions based on how the virus and host amounts "co-vary" since their abundances are dependent on one another.

Finding evidence of RNA virus incorporation in cellular genomes was the third technique.

The viruses we're looking at don't intentionally insert themselves into the host DNA, but many do by accident, as per the study, "Illuminating structural proteins in viral "dark matter" with metaproteomics."

When this happens, it provides information about the host since finding a viral signal inside a host genome indicates that the virus was once within the cell, according to co-first author Guillermo Dominguez-Huerta, a former postdoctoral researcher in Sullivan's lab.

Although most dsDNA viruses infect bacteria and archaea, which are widespread in the ocean, this recent study discovered that RNA viruses primarily infect fungus and microbial eukaryotes, as well as invertebrates to a lesser level.

Only a small percentage of marine RNA viruses can infect bacteria.

The researchers also discovered 72 distinct operationally distinct auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) scattered among 95 RNA viruses, which supplied some more of the best clues as to what types of lifeforms these viruses infect and what metabolic functions, they're trying to reprogram in order to maximize virus "fabrication" in the ocean.

Related article: Self-Replicating RNA Sheds Light on Origins of Life and Evolution